Surabaya administration to bulldoze illegal buildings on riverbanks

The Jakarta Post, Ainur R. Sophiaan, Surabaya

The East Java administration looks determined to take tougher against illegal housing and factories blamed for environmental damage in the nation's second largest city.

Thousands of illegal buildings, including 130 factories, located along the Surabaya riverbanks, will be bulldozed for contributing to the pollution of the canals that serve to supply water to the city's four million inhabitants.

The plan followed the Surabaya administration's recent move to evict 165 families comprising at least 619 people who had illegally occupied the land along the Jagir canal for many years.

The victims, mostly jobless, are currently being housed at the Margorejo accommodation center for transmigrants.

The administration told the owners of 130 factories, including home industries, on March 26 to prepare for the planned removal, which will also affect thousands of other buildings along the 10- kilometer long riverbank from Wonokromo to Karangpilang.

The administration said the buildings violated various laws enacted by the East Java and Surabaya city administrations on the environment, city development planning, protected areas and permits to establish buildings.

East Java Governor Imam Utomo said on Thursday that the policy was relevant to the national interests in preventing more floods such as those that devastated Jakarta and Java in February, killing more than 100 people.

Apart from that, he said the move was to conserve rivers or canals in Surabaya from pollution and shallowness that could contribute to flooding.

Utomo said the East Java administration wanted the removal of illegal buildings on riverbanks conducted comprehensively, involving the province's public works office and Jasa Tirta, a state-owned river management agency.

Those parties involved in the project should tightly control the affected areas to prevent the possible return of illegal residents to the would-be cleared riverbanks, he said.

The governor defended the plan, saying it would be carried out in the interests of all people in Surabaya.

He said those made homeless would be accommodated at low-cost apartment buildings to be prepared by the local administration on the condition that they must pay the cost of the housing.

Utomo could not say how to deal with other victims who could not afford to buy low-cost apartment buildings to live. However, he simply said the mayor would try to overcome their problem.